


Homecoming

by deliverusfromsburb



Series: Tuesjade Prompts [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, John is the world champion of running away from his emotions, TLC compliant, but even if you can teleport through reality you can't outrun them forever kiddo, postgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 21:38:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12897381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliverusfromsburb/pseuds/deliverusfromsburb
Summary: John tries to go shopping. That' s a normal thing to do, right? And after everything, he can be normal again. Everything is fine.tuesjade prompt for: pajamas





	Homecoming

Dave shows up at breakfast in his God Tier outfit for over a week straight before you say anything.

In your defense, it’s hard to keep track. No one gets up at the same time, and you’re lucky to encounter dreamers from Derse tucking into breakfast when you come in for lunch. But Jane promised waffles from scratch, which dragged everyone out of bed at a decent hour and gave you a chance to look at their sleepwear.

"Dude," you say, waving a fork in his direction. "Do you ever wash that?"

"They're magic," he says, pouring syrup into select waffle squares to make a stupid face. "They wash themselves."

"Is that true,” Roxy asks, “or is that something you tell yourself?"

"Whatever it takes to get me through the day."

Terezi sniffs and makes a face. "Honestly, they do kind of stink." 

"It's not my fault. Take it up with Jade."

"Hmm?" Jade looks up from her orange, which she has learned to eat like a civilized person, you're welcome. She's taken the peel off and everything. Your tutoring did help.

"You launched my entire wardrobe into deep space for baby Satan to rummage his filthy mitts through in a hot billion years. And now John's riding my ass for not having pajamas. I only had one change of clothes in my sylladex, and when I checked back at my apartment someone had cut holes in all my shirts."

Dave sprite doesn't even stop chewing, just gives him a thumbs up. 

"Can't you just wear boxers or something?" she asks, sleepily pulling apart orange sections.

"Earth to Jade," he says, tapping the side of his plate with a fork. "You launched everything into space."

"Well, if this is just coming up now, then what have you been doing about underwear?"

"I think we'd all like the answer to that question," Rose pipes up from his other side.

"Not the issue on the table."

"Guys, the solution to this is very simple," you say. "It’s called shopping."

They stare at you, and you again feel like you're teaching them a different language.

 

Jane gets it. She grew up on normal Earth, same as you, and she's only been in the game for a few months. She's the one organizing grocery lists and helping you look up takeout place's numbers. For the others, most of this might as well be witchcraft. Even Dave and Rose, who technically grew up in the “normal world”, don’t seem to know how a lot of it works. If you're being honest, you kind of like it. Throughout the game you were always a step behind when it came to knowing what was going on. Now, you're an expert, while ascended gods with mastery over the basic elements of the universe boggle at things like bus schedules and online order forms. 

"Can I come?" Jade asks while you're planning your expedition. She's always volunteering to tackle the latest task, and when it's finished she floats around at loose ends until the next one. That's what she was like during the first few weeks of your trip - fretting about where to house consorts and carapaces, double checking the structural integrity of the engines, and redoing her entire greenhouse that you'd crammed with game equipment. It had worn you out to watch her, but if anything she seems more tired when she doesn’t have something to do.

She could use some new pajamas too. Early on in your trip she’d alchemized bright yellow nightgowns that she claimed reminded her of better times on Prospit. Later, she’d settled for tank tops and shorts, although she usually put the effort in to make them sparkle. One of her shoulderstraps dangles down her shoulder far enough to make Nanna click her tongue. She’s lost weight. You hadn’t noticed.

"If you think you can handle it."

She rolls her eyes. "I lived alone on an island for years, John. I think I can deal with Target."

It's the living alone that worries you, though. Before you leave, you have to remind her to wear shoes.

 

Department stores are different than you remember. The swish of the automatic doors makes you jump and your heart race. Harsh electric lights make your skin tingle and burn. The crowd of people in your household has been comforting, but now you’re surrounded by faces you don’t recognize. When you stand close to Jade, you hear a low rumble start in her throat.

“Don’t bite anyone,” you say under your breath.

“There’s so much.”

You steer her toward the clothing section. Brightly colored merchandise keeps catching your eye. Part of your brain tries to calculate what alchemy ingredients would make all of it, and how many underlings you’d have to kill to get the grist. Now you can hand over bits of paper or a rigid square of plastic and put what you want on a conveyor belt. It feels too easy. Is an employee going to pop out and challenge you to a Strife for a package of socks?

Jade trails her fingers over the clothes as you walk past, making noises of surprise or disapproval. “I didn’t know fabric could feel like that,” she says. “All my stuff was made to last. It feels like twigs would tear this apart.”

You nod, but your response dies in your throat. You’ve walked past the menswear department. There’s a display of plain ties, the kind a businessman might wear to work every day. They're solid colors or conservative patterns, nothing fancy. Is the store sound system malfunctioning? There's a high, tinny whine in your ears. One of the ties has red spots, and all you can see is the red splotches getting bigger, and bigger…

"John?" Her voice is distant underneath the audio feedback. "John - you're flickering. Oh god no, John!"

You feel a pressure on your arm, and then the world goes white.

 

White walls. Pale carpet with streaks of trod-in oil. Silence. Nothing in the sky but blackness, and the faint glow that could pass for a sun, but you know to be the lightbulb in Jade's room far, far above.

You're on the Land of Wind and Shade, partway along the yellow yard, sometime between your thirteenth and sixteenth birthdays. And, like last time, you're not alone.

Jade lets go of your arm once she's convinced you're not going to teleport away again. She can follow you through space, but not through time - you're the only one who can navigate both. "Why did you bring us here?"

"I didn't try to." You might be overpowered, but you're limited by your own control - it's done by emotion as much as anything else. "It was just... I don't know. There was something wrong with the audio system, didn't you hear?"

"No," she says carefully. "I didn't notice."

"Well there was," you snap. "Maybe you're not used to how department stores are supposed to sound. You're not used to a lot of things. But I am, ok?"

"Ok." She sits down on your bed and smoothes out some wrinkles in the sheets. You'd alchemized an exact copy of the one that had been thrown into the oil ocean. The consorts kept forcing you to replenish your bed sheets.

"I could go and get copies of everyone's pajamas from their homes now that we’re here," you say. "I should have thought of that before, that would have saved us a trip. Wait, never mind, I'm being stupid. They wouldn't fit them now."

"John."

"But I could go over to the meteor. I'd have to be careful not to have anyone notice me, but I could do it. And even if someone did, it's not a big enough change that it would overwrite anything that matters."

"John."

You want to keep talking to drown out the pity in her voice. You don't need it. It was always directed at Dave sprite before when he was being particularly broody, and you'd hated it then - the way she acted like she was handling one of her seedlings, something so tender she had to pick it up gently or it would bruise and die. You're not fragile. You're fine.  
Besides, wasn't she going to stop all that, anyway? Hadn't she admitted she'd been babying the both of you to keep the peace? So why is she playing nice now? You didn't ask her to.

"It's not like I wanted to come back here," you say.

Her ears go back as she looks upward. LOWAS's artificial atmosphere is too dark, and you're too small, to glimpse the curve of her ceiling. "Do you know when we are?"

"No. But..." You glance over by the door. "A little after my fourteenth birthday, I threw a ping pong paddle at the wall and left a smudge I could never rub out. It's not there yet. So it must have been before then.” You don’t mean for your voice to twist the way it does, but it’s like someone else is talking. “Back when you were still having fun."

She flinches. "I wish we could change what happened to all of us. I wish we could go up there and say... oh, I don't know."

"Stop being so stupid?"

"Don't start?"

"We'd started."

Her mouth curves up in the hint of a smile. "Ok, that's true. We'd started a long time ago."

You sit down heavily on your desk chair. "I can't change those things. Not just because of unforeseen consequences, which are totally foreseeable in time travel scenarios. That's the moral of every time travel story ever. But because, if I did that, I'd want to go further back.” You draw your legs up to your chest, even though this chair is too small for the person you are now. "I came here because I wanted to go home."

Really home. Not your house built up miles high on the Land of Wind and Shade, not the battleship that carried you between universes for three years, not even the household you're putting together now. Your old house, where you spent the first thirteen years of your life. Where your dad was. Is. That space, that time. It's still there. You could go. But if you did, you're not sure you'd ever come back.

Rose asked you all once if you wished you hadn't played the game. There'd been a lot of hesitation, a lot of I'm not sures. You're the only one who'd said, immediately, yes. As everyone else settles into their new lives, it's a position that feels increasingly lonely.

"I thought I could do it," you say. "I thought I could make everything go back to the way it was before. I could go to a store and buy pajamas. It would be normal. That’s what I’ve always been. I’m supposed to be good at it.”

She chews her lip. Jade, who grew up on an island with a magical dog and dreamed of a kingdom in the clouds, has never been and never known normal. She probably thinks you're stupid for wanting it. "None of this fits us now," she says. “But I’m glad you’re talking about it. That’s something we were both bad at before. It’s one of the things I would go back and change, if I could.”

"Be happy you can’t.” You flex your fingers and imagine them going white hot and jumping out of this reality, leaving a butterfly effect of micro-changes you don’t understand in your wake. “Being able to change the past and knowing you can't is worse than not being able to do anything."

"I can believe it. I hate being powerless.” She kicks the leg of your bed. “There’s nothing to do here except… decide who gets which room, or go shopping, or relax. Every time I get bored, I wonder what the point of me is anymore.”

“You’re the Witch of Space. Whatever that means.” 

She laughs shortly. “Whatever that means. The world gets along just fine without gods.”

“My life never had a point before, but that was fine. I was a kid. Kids are just supposed to… run around. Mess things up. Go to school.” You snort. “Can you imagine us in high school?”

“I used to try, when you told me about your own classes. I wanted to imagine I was right there with you.” She smiles for real this time. “I don’t think I would’ve fit in.”

“You would have been a hit. The new kids were always interesting.”

“I would have started talking about Prospit and Bec and people would have thought I was a liar. I remember how you guys acted about it, especially at first. Even later you were humoring me.”

“You sure showed us.”

“That teaches you to listen to me. You should’ve listened when I asked you to wake up on the moon, too. We could have had so much fun.” She reaches up to touch one of the posters you haven’t – hadn’t – taken down yet. The words written on them are still easy to read. “I could write happy messages on your walls again, and you could pretend you didn’t know it was me.”

“I never saw those.”

“They blew up.” She gets off your bed and tugs the sheets down so no wrinkles are left behind. “No past changing powers here. But we can try to act better in the future, right?”

"You don't need any super powers to do that."

Somewhere above you, three best friends are embarking on an adventure and looking forward to three years of peace. Part of you wants to them to pause in this moment, so they don’t have to deal with what’s coming next. You can’t, though. The future keeps coming, and then it’s the past, and you have to deal with it. People grow and grow up, and their old lives don’t fit them anymore, no matter how much they try to squeeze. 

“We’ve got a shopping trip to finish,” you say, and hold out your hand.

She doesn’t take it. Her ears aren’t flat against her skull, but they haven’t stood all the way upright again. “Are you ok?”

You take a look around your childhood room. If you tried, you could pretend your father was about to open the door. “No. But I’m going to figure out how to be ok with that, I think.”

She smiles and takes your hand.

 

Back at the store, the sound system is playing tinny pop songs you don’t recognize. The pajamas section is empty, so that’s alright. “Look for what you like, or what you think other people will like,” you tell your sister. “I’ll be over in the guy’s section.”

She falls in love with fluffy pants patterned with pawprints, even though they won't be comfortable until wintertime, and then scoops up shirts with frogs on the front for both her and Kanaya. You cruise around for boxers and then wave her over to the Christmas clearance section. "Look at this," you say. "I'm getting this for Dave for sure."

"Is that... Darth Vader playing the piano?" she asks hesitantly. "And the piano's on fire?"

"If you look closely, he's playing the Force theme, which is a little weird thematically speaking. And look, the stockings say Han, Luke, and Leia."

She purses her lips. "Maybe he's decided to be a supportive father."

“But it’s great, right?”

“Tell him it’s from both of us.” 

The cashier doesn’t bother to give two sixteen year olds loaded down with a household’s worth of pajamas weird looks as long as your credit card checks out. You struggle with your bags to a suitable location to teleport away. “We’ll have to go back for other clothes,” Jade says while she’s checking to see if the coast is clear of witnesses. “I dumped all their stuff on future Earth.”

“I’m making them come with me next time. Otherwise I can’t be held responsible for what fashion choices I make on their behalf.”

“Sounds fair to me. I don’t see anyone nearby.” She holds out her hand. “Ready to go home?”

You adjust the bags so you have a hand free and take hers. “Sure.”

**Author's Note:**

> The Darth Vader boxers are real and the best purchase decision I have ever made: http://deliverusfromsburb.tumblr.com/post/154918582128/here-is-a-bigger-version-of-that-picture-in-case


End file.
